i do agree that the US should take no sides at this point, and in the glorious near future obama should step in as an honest broker for peace, at very least at the clinton level. i assure you that the jewish voters will not turn republican if even an edgy peace is instated, despite the loss of zionist dreams of world domination via annexing 140 square miles inhabited by 1.5 million angry palestinians or whatever the current paranoid meme of international jewish conspiracy is, and the majority of the israeli populace won't mind either. despite the israel lobby, congress, senate, and washington-based media.

of course, this will require armed forces to patrol the border and neither israel nor arab countries can be trusted with the job, the UN peacekeepers didn't work in lebanon (or many other places) so that requires the US to put its money where its mouth is, or just back off. and right now, we're in no shape nor mood to commit troops anywhere. but afghanistan, of course!!

much the same as those damn meskins is invadin america! go back where you belong! you're wreckin our sacred anglo-saxon culture!

no kidding. as i posted elsewhere yesterday, synchronicity finds the following in the nytimes on sunday: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/12/27/opinion/27blow_ready.html

it's not out of any abiding love for jews, it's just that the "average american" really really hates muslims.

yeah; at the risk of boring folks, i repeat:

"In Gaza there is also enough money and food and goods to sustain entire communities and cities living in the neighbouring Arab countries; yes, there are poor people, but not as a direct result of the blockade. There were also poor people in the most flourishing times in Gaza, the days of our leader and symbol Abu Zahwa and his dog Lulu Dahlan, may God entertain him and defeat his enemies!

The Gaza citizen, with all the disaster he faces, lives a life of plenty in comparison to that of the Egyptian or Jordanian citizen; the Palestinian tragedy right now just consists of the lack of fuel and electricity, and not being permitted to travel. The dissemination of images of Gaza on satellite channels are absolutely not true, showing hungry children eating scraps of bread and leftover food.

This narrow band teeming with a strange mix of people and known as the Gaza Strip is a problem and a tragedy in itself even without the blockade. Forty-five percent of the population is under 18; it’s an adolescent, teenage society, so is impetuous, hot-headed, moody, and unaware.

This is a mass of humans, expanding in huge numbers, their mouths and muzzles demanding their right to live and carve up resources that weren’t there in the first place. These days if you want to rent an apartment in Gaza it is very hard to find one, especially as building materials have been blocked since the overthrow until today. When I look at the terrible numbers in schools and universities I am stupefied; where will these multitudes go, capable of wreaking havoc in a prison that swells with more prisoners and tightens its choking grip day by day? Maybe Mahmoud Zahar of the Hamas leadership was being farsighted and showing a fertile imagination, when he said that with his party he is determined to conquer Egypt and Jordan and establish an Islamic caliphate in both countries; he will be able to discharge this mass of humans here and there while Gaza becomes the nucleus of these Islamic states. "

http://nostaliga.blogspot.com/2008/12/blog-post_06.html

not an exoneration of the israelis, but an even-handed analysis, the kind that people seem to want to give lip-service to, then complain when it doesn't whitewash the palestinian leadership. as though they were the only nation in the world where unethical and greedy people were kept out of power.

and:

"I must confess that when Hamas militants blasted holes into Egypt's border to end an Israeli blockade on Gaza, my first thought was how lucky those Gazans were. Landlocked and living on less than $2 a day—their plight rarely elicits envy, I know. But there are Egyptian slums that swim in more sewage and are submerged in even greater poverty. In those slums, chronic diseases go unchecked and uncured, and children grow up next to the dead in tombs turned into makeshift-housing.

Yet nobody rushes to blast holes into the imaginary border of poverty that suffocates those slums, nor are they sporting t-shirts urging us to sympathise. Why?

Because Israel cannot be blamed."

http://www.mideastweb.org/at_the_altar_of_palestine_cg.htm

which reminds me; anybody notice that ugandan rebels (who style themselves as Chrstian fundamentalists) have slaughtered over 400 Congolese civilians in the past couple of days, mostly "women and children, who were cut into pieces", for the crime of just being there when the rebels passed through? probably not, we have to ration our indignation to the most egregious crimes.